CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

14. ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN 419
reotype enforcement as the motivation behind backlash against gender
deviants (or those who deviate from gender stereotypes). They found that
women who dared to step outside of their roles by succeeding in maletyped
activities were sabotaged by their competitors, who were fully
aware of the stereotype-maintenance implication of their actions (e.g., the
implication that the poor performance of the sabotaged women would
preserve gender stereotypes). Moreover, the researchers found evidence
that backlash resulted in implicit and state self-esteem enhancement for
the saboteurs, and that gender deviant women’s fear of backlash served
to cow them into trying to conform to gender stereotypes by hiding any
gender deviance, including successful performance in a male-typed task.
The former may serve as positive reinforcement for engaging in sabotage;
the latter may serve to perpetuate gender stereotypes.
Besides the motivation to maintain stereotypes, people are also motivated
to seek fair distributions of resources. In fact, De Dreu and Gelfand
(this volume) cited conflict over resources as a major source of conflict in
organizations. As such, we suggest affirmative action programs, which
have been surrounded by controversy since their inception, as a potential
hornet’s nest of diversity-driven resource conflict. For example, Blacks
benefiting from affirmative action programs may be seen by certain White
coworkers as violating distributive fairness norms (e.g., Blacks may be seen
as taking more than their share of jobs in an organization). Consistent with
our speculation, James, Brief, Dietz, and Cohen (2001) found that Whites
high in modern racism (McConahay, 1986) demonstrated negative attitudinal
reactions to affirmative action programs aimed at benefiting Blacks.
Such perceptions of injustice and negative attitudes might lead these White
coworkers to aggressively assert their superiority in the workplace.
What tyPes of ConfliCt folloW froM Diversity?
Given the connections in the conflict literature between types of conflict
and outcomes (e.g., De Dreu & Gelfand, this volume), our next question
was “What types of conflict follow from diversity?” Jehn et al.’s (this
volume) contribution emphasizing alignment theories of group composition
concerned with the simultaneous alignment of multiple characteristics
across members (e.g., faultline theory; Lau & Murnighan, 1998) provided
us with a rich response. Jehn et al. recognized the difference between
social category (e.g., race and sex) and informational (e.g., work experience
and education) characteristics and asserted that subgroups formed
along the former characteristics lead to stereotyping and prejudice, while
those formed along the latter facilitate the effective pooling of information
and integration of perspectives. These observations served as the basis for
Jehn et al. predicting that individuals in groups with strong social category
faultlines will experience high levels of intragroup relationship, task, and
process conflicts. Alternatively, individuals in groups with strong infor-